My Health Journey
It all started when…
In mid 2014, I hit a low point after years spent neglecting and abusing both my physical and mental health. I reached a point where I contemplated ended my life, instead I chose to start work on what I now consider the most important project of my life - building a better and stronger version of myself.
My attention first turned to the physical aspect of my health at the gym. I had previously been a footballer, and had a membership at a 24x7 gym, but I was challenged to find a consistent training routine that I was able to stick to, and a training environment that motivated me to want to go there. Instead I found it easier to hit snooze and tell myself I will go later in the day, only for this not to occur.
Training with a friend who was a Personal Trainer, I soon learnt the importance of remaining committed and consistent with my training if I wanted to see results. I also used the opportunity to soak up as much training knowledge as possible, because the more I discovered about my body and how to train it, the more I found that I knew nothing. The sessions we completed some onlookers may consider we were torturing ourselves, but this was the part of the journey I needed to take to understand how far I could take my body, and what was necessary to see results. The sessions also served as an outlet for me to deal with the stress, anger and emotional state that I was still navigating through.
Once I had a consistent training routine in place where I was training five times per week, my attention turned to how I was fuelling my body. Prior to this stage, my eating habits were based on what was easy, convenient and cost effective. During this process I built a better relationship with food by understanding what my body needed, how much it needed and when it needed it if I wanted to see results. It didn’t take me long to clear out the fridge and cupboards at home of all processed foods, and replaced them with fresh, whole, nutrient rich foods from the market on a weekly basis. I went from buying the majority of my meals each week, to preparing all of them.
With training and nutrition in place, I started putting a higher priority on my sleep, recovery and stress management. As my knowledge grew about physical and mental health, so to did my awareness as to how the life I had been living, had been taking a significant toll on my body. Late nights, weekends spent partying, feeling exhausted all of the time, and my mood was like riding a rollercoaster. I started going to bed at 10pm every night, waking up at 6am every morning. I introduced rest days from training, a weekly massage and an infrared sauna. My thought process behind this was the smarter I recovered, the harder I would be able to train, and the better my body would perform.
The habits I have formed as part of my daily and weekly routine consist of:
5 x Intense Weight Training Sessions Per Week
4 Nutrient Rich Meals Per Day
Daily Activity/Steps I aim for 10,000 per day
4L of filtered water consumed each day
1hr Massage Per Week
30 Min Infrared Sauna Per Week
Fortnightly Osteo Appointment to avoid injury
It has taken six years for me to build this routine, what I have experienced is an increase in my energy, mood, focus, and endurance when it comes to both training, work and life. During this journey I have also been able to build what I now consider to be essential attributes to be successful across any aspect of life - Discipline, Resilience and Perserverance.
What I will conclude with is the beginning of my journey started by making the conscious decision to improve the relationship I had with myself, by the way I treated myself through my health. My mindset was focused on building a better and stronger version of myself which to this day I am still working on, but it has been my health and specifically my training, that has been my vessel to allow me to achieve this.
Drew